On This Day in History: December 20

The "honor killing" of Tina Isa

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Her name was Palestina Isa, but she went by Tina. She was born in Brazil in 1972, but her family moved around, and she wound up in St. Louis and became a U.S. citizen. Her father was a Palestinian Muslim, her mother a Brazilian Catholic. When Tina began to behave the way most other American teenagers do, they murdered her, calling it an “honor killing.” Because some people use their religion as an excuse to be dicks.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: December 20, 1991--

“She was so American,” one of her classmates said. She was a high school honor student who wanted to study aeronautics in college. Tina enjoyed listening to hip hop and chatting with her friends about boys they liked. Her parents tried to keep her on a short leash, forbidding her from playing sports or going on school trips. She wasn’t allowed to date or to work, and her father said she was going to be married to a Palestinian man from the West Bank that he would choose for her.

Tina wouldn’t follow the oppressive rules and snuck out to go to the prom. Pissed at the disobedience, her parents tracked her down at the school and hauled her home. During Tina’s senior year they decided to remove her from school for not doing as she was told. In a meeting with the school guidance counsellor her mother, Maria Isa, referred to her daughter as a “tramp” and a “whore.”

On November 6, 1989, Tina was late getting home. She’d just taken a job at a local Wendy’s against her parents’ will and was walked home from her first shift by a boy she’d been dating, also against her parents’ will. When she came in the door of her home her parents raged at her, calling her a bitch and a she-devil. They accused her of fornication. In the middle of the argument her father, Zein Isa said, “You are going to die tonight,” and he grabbed a knife from the kitchen.

Tina pleaded with her mother for help, but instead her mother pinned her down and yelled at her to “Shut up!” while her father repeatedly stabbed her in the chest, saying, “Die! Die quickly!” We know exactly what was said because the FBI was recording it. The FBI had the house bugged because Tina’s father was part of a jihadist terrorist cell they were investigating.

The next morning the FBI listened to the tape recordings in horror and gave them to the St. Louis Police. The parents were convicted of Tina’s murder and on December 20, 1991, were sentenced to death. Zein died in prison from diabetes in 1997 before his sentence could be carried out, and Maria’s sentence was later commuted to life in prison. She died in prison in 2014 at age 70.

Assholes.

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